


Purely in Principle

by perletwo



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Conversations, Future Fic, Gen, this is probably going to get jossed soon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-26 22:51:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2669348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perletwo/pseuds/perletwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the Obelisk storyline, Simmons has a chat with their guest in Vault D, Mr. Bakshi of Hydra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purely in Principle

**Author's Note:**

> I'm supposed to be finishing up something else, but this little trifle grabbed me by the throat over lunch & has refused to let go until I got it written. Unbeta'ed.

Jemma Simmons made her cautious way into Vault D and stopped at the wall to the prison cell inside, collecting her nerve. Then she tapped a button on the tablet in her hand and the wall vanished.

Hydra agent Sunil Bakshi sat on the edge of the bed, and looked up at the faint hum of the wall's transformation. Jemma found it hard to meet his eyes and aimed hers at the floor, but the sight of his bare feet prompted a stab of guilt-tinged pity and drove her gaze back up to his face. _Security measure,_ she reminded herself. _Ward tried some tom-fuckery with the shoes, so now nobody gets any. He'd do just the same, this one._

"Miss Simmons!" He smiled, showing shark teeth. "Do you prefer Agent Simmons, though?"

"Mr. Bakshi. It's all of a one really." She sat down heavily in the chair facing the cell.

"I have missed seeing your lovely face. Come to gloat, have you?" He stood and took a step closer to the cell's invisible wall.

"Hardly that. We've had word from the field. Race is over, team's on its way back in." She pushed at her temples with her fingertips and drew in a deep breath. "They tell me that Daniel Whitehall is dead."

Bakshi didn't move, didn't breathe; didn't react at all except for a twitch in his jaw muscle. "You're lying. Trying to provoke me, to get more information."

Jemma shook her head. "SHIELD has no interest in anything more you have to say about Hydra, Mr. Bakshi; we've struck you off the books, I'm afraid. Nor do they care overmuch about your reaction to Whitehall's death. I doubt anyone else will even think to break the news to you."

"Then why are you? Why tell me at all?"

"Because I've been on my career path since I was a very small girl, and formed attachments along the way. Mentors. Partners. In your place I'd want to be told, though in principle I've no real right to be informed."

He studied her face, nodded. "Well. Thank you for that much. Always assuming this isn't a ruse, of course."

"It's not. I haven't got the full story, but I gather neither side came out of this smelling of roses. Medbay is prepping for casualties." She sighed. "Of course, not all the damage will be the kind medicine can fix, I think."

"This daughter the Doctor is so obsessed with, you mean."

She nodded. "My friend. I never had a sister nor a best girl friend growing up, but Skye's given me a taste of that. I thought when they left that no matter what happened out there she was going to come back with some bruises at the very least. Inside, I mean. So maybe my worries for her play into my telling you about Whitehall too."

"Save your pity for your friend, Miss Simmons," he said stiffly.

"I don't pity you, Mr. Bakshi. Well, I'm a bit sorry for how the dice rolled against you. But you made your choices, with full knowledge of the risks. And you've stuck by them. Almost admirably, I think. Moreso than some others who've had that cell."

Bakshi grimaced at the oblique reference to Grant Ward, who had brought him to his Waterloo.

"Any road. I did think you should know as soon as possible, so you can start thinking about the future. Yours, I mean, in a world without Whitehall/Reinhardt. I assume you're still expecting someone from your side to rescue you before too long." His lips twitched, and she nodded. "What I thought. It strikes me though that with Whitehall gone there's a power vacuum in your organization. Presuming you're still in this cell when that shakes out - and I can't think who's left to try to break you out - whoever ends up on the throne will probably want to bring in their own loyalists, sweep out their predecessor's. There may not be very much of a place left for you in Hydra. If they'll even have you back at all."

"Assuming I don't make it home in time to win that power struggle." His shark's smile reemerged. "And I suppose you've come to make me a better offer?"

"I'm not authorized to make anyone any offers, Mr. Bakshi. Best I know, no one's thinking of this in even the vaguest way but me, and now you. Even if you were interested, I expect I'd have a job of selling even the concept of a rogue Hydra agent to a SHIELD regime that's already been burned terribly by Garrett and Ward." A hand went to the back of her neck, and she rolled her head against it to relieve the tension. "You were an independent contractor once, I hear, before Hydra. Perhaps you could return to the mercenary life."

"I'm not going back to that." At the sight of her arched brow, he added, "Because, Miss Simmons, it's better - for me - to believe in something than it is to believe nothing. Don't you agree?"

"Purely on principle, yes; but I'm not at all sure how well that's worked out for you in practice," she replied. "SHIELD is rebuilding, though, and rewriting its rules. Skill sets like yours are hard to come by. I hate to see them go to waste; surely there's some way we could make good use of them here."

"You've said as much to me before," he reminded her. "On the plane back from Morocco."

"About Donnie Gill, yes." Jemma closed her eyes, thinking back. "I didn't care for him overmuch either. But he deserved a better deal than he got."

"We were _giving_ him a better deal," Bakshi insisted. "You of all people must admit that a brainwashed Gill under Hydra control would've been better than an unstable Gill running round loose, using those ice powers indiscriminately."

"In principle, yes; but better still for Donnie Gill never to have gotten those powers at all. My hosts at the Academy let me have a peek at his records after the accident, and he had so much potential - as a scientist, I mean, not a sideshow attraction."

"If wishes were horses..." He shrugged. "We deal with what is. I'm not sure I care for having my options for the future defined entirely by you, Miss Simmons. But I will think on what you've said."

"Well, if you've got any more suggestions, do run them by me. You're not at all the type to shuffle happily off into an early retirement, I'd've said, but then people will surprise you." She stood, fiddled with her tablet.

"Jemma." Simmons looked up, blinked. "You look tired."

"I am tired."

She pressed a button on the tablet, and the wall rose up between them again.


End file.
